Hi Len, I agree with the fact that to justify the development cost and time to
create a business ontology it has to be matched and bettered by the value it
returns. On top of that is the ongoing management costs so as you say that
would be helped by supporting more than one application or business domain. Yet
one of the difficulties is to find the areas of mainstream business that could
be best supported by ontologies. (01)
A good example I use to show this is an ontology to support an ITIL service
knowledge management system SKMS. Depending upon the size of the service
operations there is likely to be the need to federate a set of knowledge bases.
I have considered the design of a system supported by an ontology to execute a
query that can infer a response from one or more of these databases. For
example a service problem type query using specific configuration items may
infer data from capacity and availability records as well as information from a
known error database. In reality these database have generally evolved through
separate journeys and are likely to have many inconsistencies with each other. (02)
Len, John (03)
On the points around Protégé and Google, yes you cannot deny the innovation
Google has made but having worked with several ontology editors and Protégé
Frames and V4 for over 7 years now I consider it to be a leader in its field -
all be it a small one. The V4 developments by Manchester University will I am
sure continue to see the application use increase and expand. (04)
rgds
Marc (05)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Len Yabloko
Sent: 25 November 2009 16:34
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Ontology development method (06)
>Marc,
>
>MIW> I was wondering if anyone might be able to help me by sharing some
> > thoughts on and/or experiences of using ontological development
> > methods. I am about to embark on the development of a business
> > related ontology and would like to use an appropriate method to
> > provide credibility and guidance to the development process.
>
JS>For business applications, I don't believe that there is any
>difference in principle between what ontologists are doing today
>and what systems analysts and database administrators have been
>doing for the past 40 years. (07)
Aside from principles, there are technical issues with developing and using
ontology for business applications. In my view the main issue is scalability,
that is: How do you maintain a body of knowledge usefull and accessible to many
different application (since cost of developing a general knowledge is not
going to be justifiable for a single application)? (08)
>
>MIW> The three methods I am considering are:
>> * OTK method - On-to-Knowledge
>> * Methontology
>> * Ushold and King
>
JS>I would add the UML design methodologies to that mix. I have
>often noted that the main reason why the Semantic Web is still
>outside the mainstream of commercial IT is that the SemWebbers
>ignored the problems, tools, and methodologies that commercial
>IT people have been working with over the past half century.
> (09)
Far from being defending SemWebbers - I don't think they are ignorant crowd. To
begin with - sW technology is primarily about Web (sorry for offending anyone
with small "s"). But it does address the main challenge that is in my view
-scalability. That does not disqualify it from achieving "S" in some cases. In
fact they are very good at identifying these cases and dividing the problem
space into specific areas with different performance characteristics.
So I would start with looking at SW literature for technical incites. (010)
>MIW> The ontology will be developed in protégé v4 and will support
> > software developers, vendors and the construction of enterprise
> > knowledge bases.
>
JS>Protégé is useful for generating OWL, but OWL is not integrated
>with what business software developers, vendors, and the people
>who develop enterprise data bases and knowledge bases actually do.
> (011)
That is true about Protege v4 which is based on OWL. However, Protrege is
designed to be highly extensible and flexible. It definitely can support
enterprise applications and can be scaled up significantly. Protege versions
before v4 were based entirely on frames (not OWL). I used Protege 3 to
integrate it with data bases for enterprise application development. You can
download the OntoBase plug-in I developed for that
http://www.ontospace.net/ontobase (012)
JS>If you want to support business applications, you have to work
>with the people who develop business applications. And you have
>to make sure that your tools are integrated with their tools. (013)
And Protege is still the best tool for that. (014)
Len Yabloko,
Owner/CEO
Next Generation Software
www.ontospace.net
>
>John Sowa
>
>
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> (015)
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